1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to an image processing apparatus and an image processing method, and more particularly, to an image processing apparatus and an image processing method, which are capable of removing a certain region of an input image or dividing a certain portion of the input image with a reduced computation and a high applicability.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image processing apparatus, such as a copier, a multifunction copier or the like, incorporates scanning an object to generate its image as a copy of the object, processing the generated image, and printing the processed image on a record medium such as a paper. Such image processing may be performed by a separate image processing apparatus.
There are various objects that we can copy, and among them are books copied in two pages at the same time by unfolding them. In this case, a center line formed between the two pages is lifted up from a scan plane during scanning, so relatively less light reaches a region along the center line. Thus, the region comes out relatively darker, compared to other copied area of the two pages. In particular, a very middle line (hereinafter referred to as “folding line”) comes out the darkest. An example of a folding line 11 is shown in FIG. 1.
It is desirable to remove a folding line image portion corresponding to a portion where substantial image distortion occurs. As one of conventional techniques for removing the folding line image, U.S. Pat. No. 6,330,050 discloses a conventional technique which estimates heights of portions on coordinates of an input image from a scan plane, and corrects a distortion of the image based on the estimated heights.
However, this technique has a problem in that a great deal of computation is required to estimate the heights and this technique is applicable only when the folding line is parallel to a scanner, that is, is perpendicular to a main scan direction.